I am Alex Lam Meem
I believe that the Internet can be used as a tool to end a particular type of cancer of civilization, called Islam. Millions of Muslims are getting enlightened with the help of the Internet and are leaving their backward totalitarian belief system which seeks to dominate the world. The end of Islam is achievable in this century, but I want to remind everyone that the Internet is being used to spread the Islamist lies and propaganda and based on my personal experience I know that it can be used not only to free Muslims but to convert people to Islam and radicalize them as well. The struggle (jihad) is not over. Armed with the knowledge from within the religion I will help to expose its true nature.
My profile picture depicts ruins of a mosque named Quwwat-ul-Islam (meaning: "might of Islam").
Below is my slightly edited short introduction from a forum for apostates of Islam
Dear infidels,
I have been postponing this introduction long enough. I have been telling myself that I am still not sure if I will stay, so I need to explore this forum better first.
Today I realized that I was simply lying to myself. The truth is I was instantly addicted to the forum. The real reason for procrastination, silly and pathetic as it may be, was fear of rejection.
While I feel very much a part of this beautiful community of ex-Muslims, I also feel different from many in a profound way. Many of you have been born into Islam and thus believing in Allah was not really your fault (for lack of a better word). I was a convert, so it seems it was completely my fault. To make things worse I was an atheist all my life before converting to Islam at age of 20. Few years later I comfortably returned to viewing the world rationally. There's considerable amount of shame inside me for being stupid enough 12 years ago to accept Islam, before I knew much about it.
I was never a mainstream muslim in any way. I was a Koran only 19er/hadith rejecter. (Hadith are narrations attributed to Muhammad and collected more than a 100 years after his death. They are the second most important religious source for Sunni Muslims.) I always had my own ideas of what is Islam and Allah. I am sure that if I stated all my beliefs openly, most Muslims would have considered me a very misguided brother. For a little while, of course, I felt that I was the most true Muslim on earth.
Later I started hanging out with fundamentalists, who were followers of hadith, for lack of more like-minded Muslims in my area. Fundies respected me a lot for my conversion and I liked it. We jokingly called each other terrorists.
There were many reasons for my apostasy, but the main reason (which encompasses many specific reasons) was reading the Koran, a book I revered without knowing what was in it. I realized that my ideas about Islam, fluffy as they were, can not be justified and called Islamic in any way if I wanted to be honest with myself.
Why I left
I have to travel 10 years (more or less) back in time so the following story will hardly be "sahih" (i.e. reliable, in Islamic terminology it is applied to hadith). I identified myself as Muslim at least for two years after my iman (faith) had evaporated completely. It's easier to recollect events in reverse order.
O ye who believe! Lift not up your voices above the voice of the Prophet, nor shout when speaking to him as ye shout one to another, lest your works be rendered vain while ye perceive not. (Koran 49:2)
I am almost certain that I finally admitted to myself that I am a kafir (infidel) after reading Sura Al-hujuraat (chapter 49 of the Koran). In my moderate and heretical Islam God was supposed to have sent a perfect guidance book, explaining all things (since hadith were merely human) for all times, for all humanity, etc etc. So why is His All-knowingness telling me how to behave around one guy, whom I will never see, as he's been dead for centuries? The book is not that long for Allah to have the luxury of repetition, vague verses and orders how to obey a dead man. Shaytan (devil) immediately whispered to me that Muhammad was a politician, a leader, and wrote the verses himself. Suddenly enlightened, I realized that obeying Allah meant obeying Muhammad and nothing more.
Long before that I had many doubts, such as "did Allah really know about evolution?", or "did He know that earth revolves around the sun and where on earth is the muddy spring of Alexander the Great?" (refferrence to 18:86 in the Koran), or "does he think that speech and writing were not evolving, when he claimed that he taught humans these things? Before that I was reading the Koran so I could prove to all the blasphemers on the Internet that Allah is up there and he is great. I did not believe in authoritative interpretations, not only because they were obviously human, but because I despised any authority (except Allah's). So I understood the Koran how I wished to understand it. Replying to lies about Islam on the Internet was supposed to be my jihad, but it only lead to more doubts. The book was very disappointing after all the propaganda I read about it.
Before that I realized that jihad is as important to Allah as prayer and charity and other so called pillars. I did not have money then and did not like crowds (so no hajj/pilgrimage to Mecca) and how useful is prayer when you want to change things? I did not want to do real jihad (by AK47 or other weapons) either, so paradoxically I established hadith about jihad by pen, being reliable. It seemed like something a real prophet would have said. I think I also wondered why a complete book would leave me clueless about who was Father of Flame, who deserved his own chapter. Wondering about hell and heaven as just recompense or position of women were also evil whispers from shaytan.
Why I converted
I think after I verified all the simple calculations of the "mathematical miracle" of Rashad Khalifa, I also counted all the letters in Iqraa (or 'Alaq - chapter 96) and "realizing" that everything important in the Koran is a multiple of 19, had my first Allahu Akbar moment. By then messenger Rashad or his gang of Submitters explained to me that everything horrible I associate with Islam if from hadith followers and the Koran is filled with divine wisdom and beautiful things in general. I stumbled upon the "miracle" and submitters from Internet searches for learning Arabic.
I believe that the Internet can be used as a tool to end a particular type of cancer of civilization, called Islam. Millions of Muslims are getting enlightened with the help of the Internet and are leaving their backward totalitarian belief system which seeks to dominate the world. The end of Islam is achievable in this century, but I want to remind everyone that the Internet is being used to spread the Islamist lies and propaganda and based on my personal experience I know that it can be used not only to free Muslims but to convert people to Islam and radicalize them as well. The struggle (jihad) is not over. Armed with the knowledge from within the religion I will help to expose its true nature.
My profile picture depicts ruins of a mosque named Quwwat-ul-Islam (meaning: "might of Islam").
Below is my slightly edited short introduction from a forum for apostates of Islam
Dear infidels,
I have been postponing this introduction long enough. I have been telling myself that I am still not sure if I will stay, so I need to explore this forum better first.
Today I realized that I was simply lying to myself. The truth is I was instantly addicted to the forum. The real reason for procrastination, silly and pathetic as it may be, was fear of rejection.
While I feel very much a part of this beautiful community of ex-Muslims, I also feel different from many in a profound way. Many of you have been born into Islam and thus believing in Allah was not really your fault (for lack of a better word). I was a convert, so it seems it was completely my fault. To make things worse I was an atheist all my life before converting to Islam at age of 20. Few years later I comfortably returned to viewing the world rationally. There's considerable amount of shame inside me for being stupid enough 12 years ago to accept Islam, before I knew much about it.
I was never a mainstream muslim in any way. I was a Koran only 19er/hadith rejecter. (Hadith are narrations attributed to Muhammad and collected more than a 100 years after his death. They are the second most important religious source for Sunni Muslims.) I always had my own ideas of what is Islam and Allah. I am sure that if I stated all my beliefs openly, most Muslims would have considered me a very misguided brother. For a little while, of course, I felt that I was the most true Muslim on earth.
Later I started hanging out with fundamentalists, who were followers of hadith, for lack of more like-minded Muslims in my area. Fundies respected me a lot for my conversion and I liked it. We jokingly called each other terrorists.
There were many reasons for my apostasy, but the main reason (which encompasses many specific reasons) was reading the Koran, a book I revered without knowing what was in it. I realized that my ideas about Islam, fluffy as they were, can not be justified and called Islamic in any way if I wanted to be honest with myself.
Why I left
I have to travel 10 years (more or less) back in time so the following story will hardly be "sahih" (i.e. reliable, in Islamic terminology it is applied to hadith). I identified myself as Muslim at least for two years after my iman (faith) had evaporated completely. It's easier to recollect events in reverse order.
O ye who believe! Lift not up your voices above the voice of the Prophet, nor shout when speaking to him as ye shout one to another, lest your works be rendered vain while ye perceive not. (Koran 49:2)
I am almost certain that I finally admitted to myself that I am a kafir (infidel) after reading Sura Al-hujuraat (chapter 49 of the Koran). In my moderate and heretical Islam God was supposed to have sent a perfect guidance book, explaining all things (since hadith were merely human) for all times, for all humanity, etc etc. So why is His All-knowingness telling me how to behave around one guy, whom I will never see, as he's been dead for centuries? The book is not that long for Allah to have the luxury of repetition, vague verses and orders how to obey a dead man. Shaytan (devil) immediately whispered to me that Muhammad was a politician, a leader, and wrote the verses himself. Suddenly enlightened, I realized that obeying Allah meant obeying Muhammad and nothing more.
Long before that I had many doubts, such as "did Allah really know about evolution?", or "did He know that earth revolves around the sun and where on earth is the muddy spring of Alexander the Great?" (refferrence to 18:86 in the Koran), or "does he think that speech and writing were not evolving, when he claimed that he taught humans these things? Before that I was reading the Koran so I could prove to all the blasphemers on the Internet that Allah is up there and he is great. I did not believe in authoritative interpretations, not only because they were obviously human, but because I despised any authority (except Allah's). So I understood the Koran how I wished to understand it. Replying to lies about Islam on the Internet was supposed to be my jihad, but it only lead to more doubts. The book was very disappointing after all the propaganda I read about it.
Before that I realized that jihad is as important to Allah as prayer and charity and other so called pillars. I did not have money then and did not like crowds (so no hajj/pilgrimage to Mecca) and how useful is prayer when you want to change things? I did not want to do real jihad (by AK47 or other weapons) either, so paradoxically I established hadith about jihad by pen, being reliable. It seemed like something a real prophet would have said. I think I also wondered why a complete book would leave me clueless about who was Father of Flame, who deserved his own chapter. Wondering about hell and heaven as just recompense or position of women were also evil whispers from shaytan.
Why I converted
I think after I verified all the simple calculations of the "mathematical miracle" of Rashad Khalifa, I also counted all the letters in Iqraa (or 'Alaq - chapter 96) and "realizing" that everything important in the Koran is a multiple of 19, had my first Allahu Akbar moment. By then messenger Rashad or his gang of Submitters explained to me that everything horrible I associate with Islam if from hadith followers and the Koran is filled with divine wisdom and beautiful things in general. I stumbled upon the "miracle" and submitters from Internet searches for learning Arabic.
